Ban child victim testimony in sex abuse cases!

A mandatory minimum bill for 25 years for first degree child rape has just passed the Washington house and senate, and the governor is expected to sign it. However, it includes such a large exception and loophole that Schwarzenegger's hummer could drive though it. The 25 year minimum excludes any convict where the sex convict is known to the victim. This law and its exception were featured on O'’Reilly Factor and Bill was scratching his head about this exception, as many of us are.

The rationalization behind this exception is that the child victim would never testify against his family member if the victim was informed that his testimony would cause his abuser to receive a very long or life sentence. Tracy has written an excellent post on this blog, analyzing a likely scenario where this situation would likely occur, and under what circumstances.
Upon examination we find that if the evidence is strong and the prosecutor has been diligent in gathering this evidence, then he would have no need to further burden the child victim by requiring any testimony from him. As Tracy points out. "“If the prosecutors and cops have gathered their evidence and have done their job then they don't need that kid to testify and even if the kid does testify, the testimony will either uphold the evidence or it won't!"

If any case absolutely depends upon such child victim testimony, then either the available evidence is too weak to convict without such testimony, or the prosecutor is lazy and/or incompetent. This is a situation where the accused is most likely to be innocent because there is so little evidence, and the prosecution is tempted to plea bargain to avoid a trial. But without a trial, there is no true justice. It becomes a mere negotiated settlement between the accused and the prosecutor, and completely violates the principle of being presumed innocent until proven guilty. It casts aside both the truth and facts as irrelevant as to whether the accused is innocent or guilty. Either the accused receives too lenient a sentence if he is guilty, or he gets an unjust sentence if he is innocent.

Another grievous miscarriage of justice can and has frequently occurred where the child is coached to testify against an accused person for the purpose of justifying more tax revenue budgeting for Child Protective Services. This situation actually occurred in Wenatchee, Washington in 1992 -1995, also known as the Wenatchee Witch Hunt. There was not a shred of hard evidence to support any of these false allegations against these innocent people, but there was plenty of coerced and manipulated child testimony.

This created one of the most wicked injustices ever perpetrated against innocent defenseless citizens who were unable to fight back against this monster Wenatchee Detective Perez and his CPS accomplices, who should also be put away for a life sentence for their crimes of fraud, extortion, witness tampering, perjury, conspiracy, racketeering, kidnapping, false arrest with no warrant or probable cause, and false imprisonment against the innocent; not to mention several counts of constitutional violations. Their crimes are just as serious as the known false charges that they brought against the innocent, and they should face the same sentence for these false charges that they sought to bring against these innocents. They have yet to face a criminal trial and the appropriate sentence for their crimes.

What I am proposing here is a change in judicial codes and statutes that would ban the use of any child ( age 12 or under ) victim testimony as admissible evidence. What would this do?

1. It would prevent the Wenatchee Witch Hunt scenario from ever happening again.

2. The sex offender bureaucrats, lawyers and detectives could never use or manipulate the child victim as a pawn for testimony, and thus would greatly reduce the frequency of plea bargains, most of which occur solely because of child witness testimony.

3. These same sex offender profiteers could never argue for a "“friends and family discount"” exclusion from any mandatory minimum or life sentence, and it would thereby remove this ridiculous excuse for light sentencing of family members under Special Sex Offender Sentencing Alternatives aka SSOSA. Any given case would more likely either go to trial or be dropped entirely.

4. Another effect of this change is that it would increase support for a one strike law among citizens that are justifiably concerned about false accusations from overzealous prosecutors using coached child witnesses and rushing to judgment. Because of those very real fears many do not support a one strike law, and the elimination of this great source of prosecutorial abuse would assure these citizens of the essential justice and necessary protection of a one strike law, and cause them to support it.

There are probably many other points that could be presented to support this proposal, and there may be some points against it that would need to be considered. Let me know what your thoughts are, and any other questions or scenarios that should be considered regarding this proposal.

Robin Hood